February 27, 2025
Oath Breakers at DOGE
Timothy Birdnow
Why the "mass resignations" at DOGE don't mean jack.
Pure Gold: DOGE Staffers Resigned, Left Misttake Letter Proving Just How Bad They Really Were
The dirty little secret is that all 21 of these staffers were already employed under the U.S. Digital Service, the Obama creation repurposed as DOGE by the Trump Administration (putting the lie to the claim it has no legal authority.)
Western Journalism pokes the sore point:
A non-story indeed. But the media seeks anything to divide and to make the American People turn away from Trump (and they first need to put some daylight between Trump and Musk.) So they take some disgruntled Obamabots/Bidenbots and build an attack story around them.
Pruning away dead wood is precisely what DOGE is intended to do; it's a good thing if they prune their own department, no?
Why the "mass resignations" at DOGE don't mean jack.
Pure Gold: DOGE Staffers Resigned, Left Misttake Letter Proving Just How Bad They Really Were
The dirty little secret is that all 21 of these staffers were already employed under the U.S. Digital Service, the Obama creation repurposed as DOGE by the Trump Administration (putting the lie to the claim it has no legal authority.)
Western Journalism pokes the sore point:
"They probably should have re-read that email first, however, before it was leaked.
"We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the staffers wrote in the collective resignation email. "However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
Read that again.
Their job, as civil servants, was to serve no matter who the president was. They knew that when they took the oath. They say that.
They also knew they were working at an agency with a broad and obscure purview, except that it mostly had to do with the digital footprint of the U.S. government. From the "Our Mission” page of the USDS’ website, which is still up despite the repurposing to DOGE: "We collaborate with public servants throughout the government to address some of the most critical needs and ultimately deliver a better government experience to people. We work across multiple agencies and bring best practices from our various disciplines, which include engineering, product, design, procurement, data science, operations, talent, and communications.”
I again pose the Bobs’ question from "Office Space”: What would you say … you do here? Because it sounds like pretty much whatever the government wants you to do at that point in time; the main reason the USDS was established in the first place was because of the trainwreck that was the roll-out of Healthcare.gov, the infamous Obamacare portal. Since then, it’s mostly done whatever digital work suited the administration in charge.
So they swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and do their duties regardless of administration at a vague, distal limb of the Beltway leviathan and now admit, actually, they didn’t really mean it if they’re being asked to be civil servants under a president that makes them do something they disagreed with.
TL;DR: They lied when they took the oath required for their job. They now expect to be treated sympathetically.
Now, this is a non-story; Musk himself noted on X that the staffers were "Dem political holdovers” that "would have been fired had they not resigned,” and the rest of the letter seems to bear that out.
"We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the staffers wrote in the collective resignation email. "However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
Read that again.
Their job, as civil servants, was to serve no matter who the president was. They knew that when they took the oath. They say that.
They also knew they were working at an agency with a broad and obscure purview, except that it mostly had to do with the digital footprint of the U.S. government. From the "Our Mission” page of the USDS’ website, which is still up despite the repurposing to DOGE: "We collaborate with public servants throughout the government to address some of the most critical needs and ultimately deliver a better government experience to people. We work across multiple agencies and bring best practices from our various disciplines, which include engineering, product, design, procurement, data science, operations, talent, and communications.”
I again pose the Bobs’ question from "Office Space”: What would you say … you do here? Because it sounds like pretty much whatever the government wants you to do at that point in time; the main reason the USDS was established in the first place was because of the trainwreck that was the roll-out of Healthcare.gov, the infamous Obamacare portal. Since then, it’s mostly done whatever digital work suited the administration in charge.
So they swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and do their duties regardless of administration at a vague, distal limb of the Beltway leviathan and now admit, actually, they didn’t really mean it if they’re being asked to be civil servants under a president that makes them do something they disagreed with.
TL;DR: They lied when they took the oath required for their job. They now expect to be treated sympathetically.
Now, this is a non-story; Musk himself noted on X that the staffers were "Dem political holdovers” that "would have been fired had they not resigned,” and the rest of the letter seems to bear that out.
A non-story indeed. But the media seeks anything to divide and to make the American People turn away from Trump (and they first need to put some daylight between Trump and Musk.) So they take some disgruntled Obamabots/Bidenbots and build an attack story around them.
Pruning away dead wood is precisely what DOGE is intended to do; it's a good thing if they prune their own department, no?
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
09:12 AM
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